Motorola's Moto Z and Z Force are modular phones done right

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"Where do we go from here?" That's the question phone makers and gadget reviewers like me ask whenever a new smartphone launches and it's just another great smartphone in a sea of great smartphones.

As much as I prefer the iPhone, I'll admit it has become boring. The iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus are great, but undeniably dull (even in rose gold). This year's iPhone 7 (or whatever Apple will call it) doesn't look like it'll be a bold reinvention, either.

There's nothing wrong with being good but boring. But where's the fun in that?

The last time smartphones felt truly new and exciting was when Samsung introduced the Galaxy Note Edge with the curved display edge in 2014, which has gone on to become a design signature in its flagship Galaxy S phones. Everyone called it a gimmick, but when something becomes stale — as smartphones have — people will start looking for something new.

"Modular" (and I use that term loosely since they're more like external add-ons) smartphones might be the next big thing if you buy into LG and Lenovo's visions.

LG sort of half-baked its G5 and now Lenovo (it's still weird not saying Motorola, since the branding is being phased out) is giving it a go with the Moto Z and Moto Z Force, two phones that are compelling on their own even without the "Moto Mods" modules that attach to them. The most modular phone of them all — Google's Project Ara — won't arrive until next year.

In the U.S., the the Moto Z and Moto Z Force are Verizon exclusives and sport the "Droid Edition" branding. It sucks, but that doesn't mean you should stop reading if you're on another carrier. The unlocked international version will be released in a few months and it might actually be better since it won't come with any of the carrier bloatware apps that are pre-installed on the two models I tested.

The Moto Z and Z Force will be available on July 28 for $26 and $30 per month, payable in installments over 24 months, or for the full prices of $624 and $720, respectively. Pre-orders start on July 21.

Verizon also has a special trade-in promotion where it'll accept your old phone (even if it has a cracked screen) and give you up to $300 toward the purchase of either phone.

Moto Z? More like Moto Thin

The Moto Z is only 0.20-inches thick (left) and the Moto Z Force is thicker at 0.28-inches (right) and has a larger battery, sharper camera and tougher screen.

Image: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE

The Moto Z and Moto Z Force are like brothers. They both share the same DNA from their parents, but they have differences that set them apart.

Let's talk about similarities first. Both phones have 5.5-inch Quad HD resolution AMOLED screens with deep blacks, wide viewing angles and great brightness levels that are visible in direct sunlight even when they're set to 25 percent.

Inside, they're both powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820 processor and 4GB of RAM, which can handle virtually anything you throw at it from Snapchat to 3D gaming. And they both run Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow (more on that in sec) and come with 32GB or 64GB of internal storage with microSD card slots to expand that storage.

Fingerprint sensor is super fast and you can press and hold it down to lock the screen! nice!

Image: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE

They both have a fast responsive fingerprint reader below the screen, a single front-facing speaker, a 5-megapixel front-facing camera with LED flash, USB Type-C port, don't have headphone jacks, and have been treated with a water-repellant nano coating (good for light rain sprinkles, but not for submersion in any pools or toilets).

The Moto Z is one of the sleekest smartphones ever created.

Of the two, I like the Moto Z more because it is ultra thin — only 0.20-inches thick (not counting the huge camera bump, of course) and it feels amazing. The Moto Z is thin on another level — not the it's "thin" but it's imperceivable when compared other phones — but like Razr-flip-phone-head-turning-thin and makes the "thin" Galaxy S7 Edge (0.30-inches) and iPhone 6S Plus (0.29-inches) feel like bricks.

The Moto Z Force is thicker at 0.28-inches (not including the camera bump), but still thinner than the S7 Edge and iPhone 6S Plus.

Both phones have a microSD card for storage expansion.

Image: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE

Both phones don't have a headphone jack. To listen to music you'll need to go Bluetooth or use the included USB-C dongle.

Image: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE

Those are the physical differences, but there are internal ones as well. The thicker Moto Z Force has a larger 3,500 mAh battery compared to the Moto Z's 2,600 mAh battery. In my testing, the Moto Z Force got around a day and a half of battery life and the Moto Z just makes it through a day with anywhere between 10 to 15 percent battery life leftover by bedtime.

The Moto Z Force also has a higher resolution 21-megapixel rear camera compared to the Moto Z's 13-megapixel shooter, as well as a ShatterShield screen that is less likely to crack when dropped.

Without question, the Moto Z and Moto Z Force are Lenovo's sleekest, most powerful and most feature-packed smartphones to date. There's almost nothing to dislike about them from a hardware perspective, except maybe the rather high-placed power and volume buttons located on the right side and the loss of the headphone jack.

Mod it up

Modules magnetically attach and connect to the Moto Z and Z Force through these contacts.

Image: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE

The Moto Z and Z Force's marquee feature is their modular design. You'll notice there are 16 little dots (17 if you count the one in the middle) on the back of the phones. Moto Mods magnetically snap onto the Moto Z and Moto Z Force and connect instantly via these contacts.

The design snob in me wants to say all these exposed contacts are hideous, but the futurist in me is in love with how effortless and instant connecting Mods is.

Motorola gave me four Moto Mods to try out.

Personalize with a Style Shell

Image: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE

Style Shells make the camera lens flush with the body.

Image: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE

The first one is a "Style Shell" panel ($20-$25) that's purely decorative. They're available in three different materials (wood, leather and patterned fabric) and really make it easy to switch up the look and feel of the phones. Even though I prefer my phones "nude," I really liked keeping the wooden Style Shell (it's included in the box) on the Moto Z for a few reasons: It looks good, it eliminates the camera bump, balances out the top-heavy weight and makes it less slippery.

Power Pack

Image: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE

Image: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE

A more practical Mod is the Power Pack ($60-$90), a 2,200 mAh battery add-on that gives you an 85% charge and is only slightly thicker than the Style Shells. I recently reviewed the Air Case, the world's thinnest iPhone battery case and really liked it because it barely added any bulk and was easy to attach. The Power Pack is even better since it easily snaps on and off and comes in several branded designs from the likes of TUMI and Kate Spade New York.

JBL SoundBoost Speaker

Get louder sound.

Image: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE

Has a built-in kickstand.

Image: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE

Another mod is the JBL SoundBoost speaker ($80). Snap this guy on the back and you get louder sound, a kickstand and a built-in 1,000 mAh battery, which is good for up 10 hours of extra battery life. You definitely get louder sound, but you still get a lot of distortion at higher volumes.

Moto Insta-Share Projector

Costs $300

Image: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE

Projects up to 70-inch screens.

Image: raymond wong

And lastly, the Moto Insta-Share Projector ($300) is a portable PICO projector that projects the phone's screen onto any surface at up to 70-inch projections at 50 lumens of brightness. It also comes with an additional 1,100 mAh battery. It's a cool little mod that sounds great for business people or for anyone who wants to throw up a huge screen on a wall, but the picture quality is not very bright and you will need a pretty dark room to get good contrast.

The resolution (854 x 480) is also extremely low compared to the phone's native Quad HD screen resolution. I also noticed after about 25 minutes of usage the projector would overheat the phone and stop working altogether until the phone cooled down (I guess the mini fan inside the projector doesn't really do much to help keep things cool).

It's a cool idea and it works, but you could easily find a pico projector for around the same price that's brighter and outputs higher resolution video.

Marshmallow with a side of bloatware

Look at all that bloatware pre-installed on the Moto Z and Moto Z Force Droid Edition.

Image: brittany herbert/mashable

The Moto Z and Moto Z Force I tested came with 32GB of internal storage. There is also a 64GB storage model for both phones, but you'll only be able to get them through the Moto Maker website and not from Verizon.

Like all Motorola devices since the original Moto X, you get a mostly pure Android experience with no custom skin mucking up Google's Material Design interface and slowing down the software.

You still get some of the signature Motorola touches like Moto Display, which shows you the time and date and lets you peek at notifications without lighting up the entire screen and wasting battery life; useful gestures like the twist-to-activate camera and double chop-to-turn-on-flashlight. But broadly speaking, the software is Nexus-like and as Google intended, which is great.

I counted 17 pre-installed apps — from Verizon and third-parties — on both phones. Yuck!

The only thing that I don't like about the software is all the pre-installed bloatware. I counted 17 pre-installed apps on both phones including Verizon's own gross carrier apps and almost a dozen third-party apps like Audible, NFL Mobile, Hotels.com, IMDB, Panda Pop, and Slotomania, to name a few.

It's a large amount of apps many people don't want, but I suppose it's an improvement over the 20 bloatware apps the Droid Maxx 2 comes with.

The good news is you can uninstall six of them (Hotels.com, Cookie Jam, Empire: Four Kingdoms, Juice Jam, Panda Pop, Slotomania, and Genies & Gems — this last one comes with the Moto Z Force in place of Empire for some reason). As for the rest, you'll have to deal with them clogging up your app drawer.

It really sucks the non-removable apps hog up 766.66MB of your internal storage, but on the plus side, both phones come with memory card slots for expansion.

Cameras still lag behind

The Moto Z has a 13-megapixel camera and the Moto Z Force has a 21-megapixel camera. Both have dual- LED flashes.

Image: brittany herbert/mashable

A lot of phone makers boast about their DxOMark scores nowadays and Lenovo's no different. Pay no attention those silly synthetic benchmark scores because they don't tell the whole story. They're just numbers for tests that don't take into account real-world usage.

With a single point separating the Galaxy S7 Edge and Moto Z Force, you'd probably think the latter is nearly as good. But that's not true.

Moto Z and Z Force camera sample photos

Saturated colors

Colors from the Moto Z's 13-megapixel back camera are more pumped up and saturated (like the bluer skies) and warmer than reality. The photo looks almost looks like a cartoon. (Taken with Moto Z)

Image: raymond wong/mashable

HDR works wonders

Turning on High Dynamic Range (HDR) really enhances the areas of a photo that would normally be difficult to expose for (like the clouds and sky in this photo). (Taken with Moto Z)

Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

Good dynamic range

The Moto Z's camera takes photos with good dynamic range, but just know it can be a hit or a miss. (Taken with Moto Z)

Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

Okay low-light

Even though the Moto Z's back camera has an f/1.8 lens, it's merely average. Low-light photos are blurrier and grainier than I hoped for. (Taken with Moto Z)

Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

Lots of resolution, but...

On the Moto Z Force, you get 21-megapixels, but zoom in and you'll see the details aren't that sharp. (Taken with Moto Z Force)

Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

Sharp close-ups

If you can get the focusing right, you can take some crisp close-up photos like this one of Spock. (Taken with Moto Z Force)

Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

Soft imaging

Indoor photos came out soft no matter if it was natural light or not. Photos look sharp on the phones' display though. (Taken with Moto Z Force)

Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

If you're strictly viewing the photos on the phone screens, the pictures are going to look good. But blow them up on a computer screen and you'll see the cameras don't really hold up to the Galaxy S7 or iPhone 6S.

The Moto Z and Moto Z Force's rear cameras tend to saturate colors more making photos look a little too unnatural. Photos also aren't as sharp when viewed on an external display. Moreover, the autofocus while fast would often flash a warning to "Hold camera steady" before the shutter fired off. On several occasions, I thought I had taken a solid pic, but when I reviewed them later I saw the photos were blurry — most likely because I didn't heed the warning message.

Without HDR

(Click to enlarge)

Image: raymond wong/mashable

With HDR

(Click to enlarge)

Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

Low-light performance is where the two phones lag behind Samsung the most.

In the five-way comparison below (in left to right order) between the Moto Z Force, Moto Z, Galaxy S7 Edge, HTC 10 and iPhone 6S Plus, you can see how different the cameras perform. Megapixel differences aside (Moto Z Force has 21-megapixels, Moto Z has 13-megapixels, Galaxy S7 Edge has 12-megapixels, HTC 10 has 12-megapixels and iPhone 6S Plus has 12-megapixels), you can see the Galaxy S7 Edge beats everyone by a mile with a brighter, sharper and cleaner picture.

Notice how there is more contrast and clearer highlights on the Nintendo 3DS to the left of the porcelain cat figure in the S7 Edge picture, but it's just unidentifiable blackness in the Moto Z and Moto Z Force pics. The HTC 10 took the worst shot with too much contrast and poor image noise reduction. The iPhone 6S Plus took an overexposed and bright photo, but its significantly slower f/2.2 lens holds it back from competing with the Galaxy S7 Edge's f/1.7 lens.

The Moto Z Force has the advantage of a higher 21-megapixel sensor, but megapixels aren't everything. The Moto Z's 13-megapixel's and f/1.8 lens is a closer match with the Galaxy S7 Edge's 12-megapixels and f/1.7 aperture, but it's still not match for Samsung:

Moto Z vs. Galaxy S7 Edge (Click to enlarge)

Image: raymond wong/mashable

Here are a few more comparisons. I'll let you be the judge which phone's camera takes the better low-light photo. (You can click on any of them to enlarge them.)

I always dread taking selfies for reviews. While I'm not a big selfie guy, I recognize that looking on fleek is important to a lot of people.

There's a 5-megapixel selfie camera on both phones with a front-facing flash. On paper, they're both on even ground with the Galaxy S7 Edge and iPhone 6S Plus, which also have 5-megapixel selfie cameras.

Moto Z Force

(Click to enlarge)

Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

Moto Z

(Click to enlarge)

Image:

Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge

(Click to enlarge)

Image: RAYMOND WONG/MASHABLE

iPhone 6S Plus

Despite having the same resolution front cameras, my selfies all came different out (I turned off all beauty modes and skin effects, flash and HDR). The Moto Z Force and Moto Z selfies are a little soft, but they look the best. The Moto Z Force selfie just barely edges the Moto Z with more accurate colors and better dynamic range in hair. The Galaxy S7 Edge has the widest angle lens of the bunch, but my face is a little too red. The iPhone 6S Plus selfie is my least favorite since it's over-sharpened and grainy details make me look old and tired.

Moto does awesome... again

The Moto Z and Moto Z Force exceeded my expectations. As average as the Moto X phones have been, they weren't inspiring or exciting by any means. They were safe phones that got the job done. Last year's Moto X Pure Edition finally brought a camera that took decent photos.

Image: BRITTANY HERBERT/MASHABLE

While not leading class in every category (the cameras need some tweaking), the Moto Z and Moto Z Force are still exquisite and powerful flagship phones that can hold their own against this year's top dogs.

I really like the idea of Moto Mods, but they're just too expensive compared to buying separate accessories that offer more for a lot less. Still, that doesn't mean the mods aren't cool and convenient.

The Moto Z and Moto Z Force are excellent phones if you want something different that isn't a Samsung or iPhone.

The only thing that really bugged and still bugs me is the removal of the headphone jack. It's nice that there's a USB Type-C-to-3.5mm dongle included in the box, but I still dislike this trend of removing the jack. It's also worrisome that I won't be able to easily swap in the inevitable Lightning Apple EarPods with any of these jack-less phones with USB Type-C ports.

And, of course, there's the fact these two phones are exclusive to Verizon in the U.S. It's going to be a tough decision for Verizon customers. Do you get the Galaxy S7 Edge with the best everything including wireless charging and water-resistance, the super slim Moto Z or beefier Moto Z Force and the modular add-ons they support, or wait for the iPhone 7 in a few months?

I can't make that decision for you, but if you're maybe thinking you want something different that doesn't come with any major compromises (outside of the ignorable bloatware and lack of a headphone jack), the Moto Z and Moto Z Force are fantastic options.

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